Child Immunization Resources

Child immunization FAQ with a pediatrician, BKC courses, immunization resources, and webinars.

BKC Courses

Learn more about ways to support families as they consider child immunization decisions by taking an online course in Better Kid Care’s On Demand system.

  • Workshop Strategies to Support Child Immunizations—This train-the-trainer course equips people to facilitate the “Strategies for Building Child Vaccine Confidence” workshop. In this workshop, trusted professionals from the community help others to comfortably discuss the benefits of and barriers to child vaccines. This all-in-one course provides a workshop facilitation guide, the learning activity materials, and a wealth of printable/downloadable fact sheets—everything a person would need to lead a community discussion. Workshop participants can then take the resources and brainstormed solutions back to their own programs and families and continue the good work of supporting families as they navigate child vaccination decisions and strengthen child health outcomes.
  • Supporting the Child Vaccination Decision Process
  • Apoyo al Proceso de Decisión de Vacunación Infantil

Child vaccines and public health policies and impact

Child Immunization FAQ

Vaccine questions answered by a consulting pediatrician.

*Responses (from Dr. Timothy Shope) edited for clarity

Where can ECE/OST educators get help with “foreign” vaccines or families who have recently entered the United States and may not have access to immunization records? What about knowing equivalent names for employment records/college students?

Dr. Timothy Shope: This is the job of the pediatric health provider. If parents have the vaccine information sheets, there is usually English translation on them. Sometimes their vaccine cards will have English translations too. Otherwise, pediatrician offices have translation services that they can use to support communication with the family and translation of printed records.

Health records are private information, so accessing them is the job of a doctor’s office. Parents may sign a release of information and the new doctor may contact the former doctor for a record transfer. Many states have a vaccine registry so that vaccines given in another office in the same state will show up in that state’s system. In Pennsylvania this is called SIIS. It is only accessible to medical providers.

If there are no records of previous vaccines, then the pediatrician/clinic will start from scratch and immunize as if the child has not received any.

There is concern about the cost of immunizations to families. How does insurance work for this?

Dr. Timothy Shope: States may vary in how child immunizations are covered. Variations may exist for commercial insurance as well, so it is important to confirm costs or co-pays for each family’s particular situation. For Medicaid recipients in Pennsylvania, there are no costs to the family. Even if a visit came “early,” before the annual well-check date, the family would not have to pay a fee. The only impact would be that the doctor’s office would be reimbursed differently.

All medical offices, regardless of type of insurance, will provide immunization-only appointments usually directly with a nurse (no doctor is involved other than ordering the vaccine). In general, insurers are incentivized to ensure patients have up-to-date immunization coverage. It costs less to get the vaccinations and have children stay out of hospitals than to have children hospitalized with a preventable disease. Insurers are graded against one another based on many measures, including immunization rates.

Why do pediatricians’ requirements not match the child care requirements for child immunizations? 

Dr. Timothy Shope: This may require a location-specific answer. There is often a delay in CDC recommendations by the ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) being adopted into state law. This is especially true of recommendations that have come after 2000, when states seemed to have stopped legislating on child immunizations. In some cases, the pediatrician may be familiar with state-determined public school immunization requirements which are not the same as the state’s child care program immunization requirements. COVID, flu, and RSV are among the worst vaccine-preventable diseases in history.

Dr. Timothy Shope Bio

Dr. Shope is an academic general pediatrician and Professor of Pediatrics at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He served for 21 years in the U.S. Navy and held positions as Pediatric Residency Program Director (2004-2008) at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Va. and the Specialty Leader/Advisor to the Navy Surgeon General (2008-2011), managing and mentoring the Navy’s pediatricians. Dr. Shope consulted for the Department of Defense child care system for 11 years and served on the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Executive Committee of the Section on Early Education and Child Care, now the Council on Early Childhood. He is a consultant for the Pennsylvania Chapter of the AAPs’ ECELS (Early Childhood Education Linkage System) program and advises the Pennsylvania Key in translating into practice the policies of the Office of Child Development and Early Learning. Dr. Shope is a national expert on managing infectious diseases in group child care settings. He is the co-editor of the AAPs’ Managing Infectious Diseases in Child Care and Schools, now in its 5th edition and used by almost three-quarters licensed US child care centers; author of the AAP Red Book chapter, Children in Out-of-Home Child Care; Technical Panel Chair for Caring for Our Children, 4th edition; and is co-author of two online AAP educational modules: Curriculum for Managing Infectious Diseases in Early Education and Child Care Settings and Preventing and Managing Infectious Diseases in Early Education and Child Care. For nearly two decades, he has conducted annual educational sessions at national conferences and webinars, involving Head Start and other early childhood educators.

Website Resources

Webinars

Introducing Workshop Strategies to Support Child Immunizations

This Better Kid Care webinar shows attendees how to access the Workshop Strategies to Support Child Immunizations course in the Penn State Better Kid Care On Demand system. It highlights the tools provided and lessons learned from the pilot project. (Recorded January 23, 2025 )

It’s the Season: Staying Healthy and Up-to-Date on Vaccines (Flu, COVID-19 and RSV)

Child Care Aware of America discuss flu season, rates of COVID-19 and RSV, the new COVID-19 booster, and vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the flu. Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains how child care professionals can help promote vaccines to ensure healthy child care. (Recorded October 24, 2023)

Part 1: Community Strategies for Vaccine Equity for Young Children

This Better Kid Care webinar focuses on effective strategies for advancing vaccine equity for young children in early childhood programs. (Recorded March 22, 2023)

Part 2: Navigating Conversations With Families About Childhood Vaccines

This Better Kid Care webinar explains why childhood vaccine conversations are uncomfortable at times and how professionals can approach them in ways that stay true to fact-based information while preserving valued relationships with families. (Recorded May 31, 2023)